Nùng people

Origins

Pre-Austronesian migration waives to Taiwan from the mainland.

Linguistic map of ancient East Asia by James M. Unger (2013), showing that Dawenkou culture was linked to pre-Austronesian.

Path of Migration and Division of Some of the Major Ethnicities with their genetically distinctive markers, adapted from Edmondson and Gregerson (2007:732) . The sketched migration route M119-Baiyue from Southeast Asia corresponds to the southern origin hypothesis of early Austronesians.

Kra-Dai migration route proposed by Matthias Gerner (2014) in a linguistic computational project.

Nung has traditionally been classified as a Central Tai language within Kra-Dai or Daic (also Kadai, Tai-Kadai or Zhuàng-Dòng) family. The Kra-Dai speaking peoples living across a substantial region of East and Southeast Asia are commonly considered to originate in South China. Although the position of Kra-Dai in relation to Austronesian is still attested, the generally accepted hypothesis has it that Kra-Dai and Austronesian are genetically connected. Weera Ostapirat (2005) sets out a series of regular sound correspondences between them, assuming a model of a primary split between the two; they would then be co-ordinate branches.^[5] Weera Ostapirat (2013) continues to maintain that Kra-Dai and Austronesian are sister languages, based on some phonological correspondences.^[6] On the other hand, Laurent Sagart (2008) proposes that Kra-Dai is a later form of FATK,^{[lower-alpha 1]} a branch of Austronesian belonging to subgroup Puluqic developed in Taiwan, whose speakers migrated back to the mainland, both to Guangdong, Hainan and north Vietnam around the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE.^[7] Upon their arrival in this region, they underwent linguistic contact with an unknown population, resulting in a partial relexification of FATK vocabulary.^[8]

Researches into the origins of the Austronesian languages have still remained controversial with two competing hypotheses. The first hypothesis is supported by Robert Blust, which connects lower Yangtze neolithic Austro-Tai entity with the rice-cultivating Austro-Asiatic cultures, assuming the center of East Asian rice domestication, and putative Austric homeland, to be located in the Yunnan/Burma border area.^[9] Under that view, there was an east-west genetic alignment, resulting from a rice-based population expansion, in the southern part of East Asia: Austroasiatic-Kra-Dai-Austronesian, with unrelated Sino-Tibetan occupying a more northerly tier.^[9] The second one is Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian hypothesis proposed by Laurent Sagart, which argues for a north-south genetic relationship between Chinese and Austronesian, based on sound correspondences in the basic vocabulary and morphological parallels.^[9] Laurent Sagart (2017) concludes that the possession of the two kinds of millets^{[lower-alpha 2]} in Taiwanese Austronesian languages (not just Setaria, as previously thought) places the pre-Austronesians in northeastern China, adjacent to the probable Sino-Tibetan homeland.^[9] Ko et al.'s genetic research (2014) appears to support Laurent Sagart's linguistic proposal, pointing out that the exclusively Austronesian mtDNA E-haplogroup and the largely Sino-Tibetan M9a haplogroup are twin sisters, indicative of an intimate connection between the early Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan maternal gene pools, at least.^[10][11] Additionally, results from Wei et al. (2017) are also in agreement with Sagart's proposal, in which their analyses show that the predominantly Austronesian Y-DNA haplogroup O3a2b*-P164(xM134) belongs to a newly defined haplogroup O3a2b2-N6 being widely distributed along the eastern coastal regions of Asia, from Korea to Vietnam.^[12] Another paper by McColl et al. (2018) indicates that the Taiwanese Austronesian are a mixture of an Onge-like population and a population related to the Tianyuan ancient individual.^[13]

If Sagart's theory that Kra-Dai being a sub-group of proto-Austronesian migrated out of Taiwan and back to the coastal regions of Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, and (possibly) Vietnam is right, they would simply not have had a development resembling anything like the fate of other proto-Austronesian languages that migrated out of Taiwan to the Philippines and other islands in Southeast Asia.^[14] Besides various concrete evidence for a Kra-Dai existence in the present-day Guangdong, remnants of Kra-Dai languages spoken further north could be found in unearthed inscriptional materials and non-Han substrata in Min- and Wu-Chinese dialects.

Wolfgang Behr (2006, 2009) points out that most of non-Sinitic words found in Chu inscriptional materials are of Kra-Dai origin. A few examples that look as if they may be related to Austroasiatic and Miao-Yao are from edited texts of the mid-Han period and later.^[15] The most notable item that Wolfang Behr shows is the Chu graph for "one, once" written as (? < OC *nnəŋ) in the E jun qijie 鄂君啟筯 bronze tally and in Warring States bamboo inscriptions, which represents a Kra-Dai areal word.^[16] The following are examples of Kra-Dai words in Chu inscriptional materials that Behr identifies:

• PROTECT, COVER^[17]

「揞、揜、錯、摩，藏也。荊楚曰揞，吳揚曰揜，周秦曰錯，陳之東鄙曰摩。」

「揞」ăn < MC *ʔomX < OC *ʔʔəm-q ← proto-Tai *hom^B1 (Siamese hom^B1, Longzhou hum^B1, Bo'ai hɔm^B1, Lao hom, Ahom hum etc.) "cover up" | proto-Kam-Sui *zum^Hɣ^C1 "hide, cover up"

• GRASSHOPPER/LOCUST^[18]

「蟒，…南楚之外謂之蟅蟒。」

「蟅」zhē < MC *tsyæ < OC *ttak ← proto-Kam-Sui *thrak⁷-it (Mulam -hɣak⁸-t, Kam ʈak⁷-it, Then zjak⁷, Sui ndjak⁷ “grasshopper”)

• PIG, HOG^[18]

「猪，…南楚謂之豨。」

「豨」xī < MC *xjɨj < OC *hləj-q ← PKS *ʔdlaaj⁵ (> Kam (h)laa:i⁵) “pig”

• "GET BETTER" (of ailments): “ 智于身”^[19]

知～～智 zhī < *trje(H) < *te(-s)

「知」，愈也。南楚病愈者…或謂之知"

"zhī means 'to get better'. In Southern Chǔ , when a sickness gets better ... this is occasionally called zhī." ← proto-Tai *ʔdii^A1 “be good, better” (Siamese dii^A1, Longzhou dai^A1, Bo'ai nii^A1)

• MOTHER, FEMALE, LADY in Spring and Autumn Chŭ (5th c. B.C.)^[20]

嬭 mĭ < *mjieX < *mej-q ← proto-Tai *mɛɛ^B, proto-Kam-Sui *mlɛɛ^B, proto-Hlai *mʔai^B vs. proto-Austro-Asiatic *me-q, proto-Mon *meʔ, proto-Katuic *mɛ(:)ʔ “mother”

• ONE, ONCE, BE UNIFIED, BE UNIQUE in Warring States Chŭ^[21]

Bronze inscriptions-standard: 一, 壹, 弌 yī < *ʔjit < *ʔit "one, be / become one" etc. (> all later Sinitic languages)

Warring States-Chŭ dialect: 「」 ← p[能] néng < *nong < *nnəŋ

cf. 「其義也」"his propriety is unique"; 「能為，肰然句後能為君子」"if able to unify — only after this one may become a true gentlemen"; 「禱」"sacrifice once/in one piece?"; 「歲返」"to be returned once a year" (鄂君啟節)

← proto-Tai *hnïŋ = *hnɯŋ (Siamese ²²nɯŋ, Dai ³³nɯŋ, Longzhou nəəŋ^A etc.) "one, once"

• • never used for abstract noun ‘the one’ or along/in contrast with other numerals.
• WHITE^[22]

「𩫁」 ← p[高] gāo < MC *kaw < OC *kkaw ← proto-Tai *xaau^A1 (Siamese, Longzhou khaau^A1, Bo'ai haau^A1) "white" (cf. proto-Mon *klaɨ^A “white”)

• THICK^[23]

「」← p[石］shí < MC *dzyek < OC *[d,l]ak ← PKS *ʔnak⁷ (Kam nak⁷) "thick"

In the early 1980s, Zhuang linguist, Wei Qingwen (韦庆稳), electrified the scholarly community in Guangxi by identifying the language in the "Song of the Yue People" as a language ancestral to Zhuang.^[24] Wei used reconstructed Old Chinese for the characters and discovered that the resulting vocabulary showed strong resemblance to modern Zhuang.^[25] Later, Zhengzhang Shangfang (1991) followed Wei’s insight but used Thai script for comparison, since this orthography dates from the 13th century and preserves archaisms viz-à-viz the modern pronunciation.^[25][26] The following is a simplified interpretation of the "Song of the Yue People" by Zhengzhang Shangfang quoted by David Holm (2013) with Thai script and Chinese glosses being omitted:^{[27][lower-alpha 3]}

This is one of a number of interpretations of this poem.^[24] Zhengzhang notes that 'evening, night, dark' bears the C tone in Wuming Zhuang xam^C2 and ɣam^C2 'night'. The item raa normally means 'we inclusive' but in some places, e.g. Tai Lue and White Tai 'I'.^[28] Zhengzhang's interpretation of the song receives criticism from Laurent Sagart as he claims that Chinese scholars often associate the Yue language with Tai-Kadai.^[29]

Li Hui (2001) finds 126 Kra-Dai cognates in Maqiao Wu dialect spoken in the suburbs of Shanghai out of more than a thousand lexical items surveyed.^[30] According to the author, these cognates are likely traces of 'old Yue language' (gu Yueyu 古越語).^[30] The two tables below show lexical comparisons between Maqiao Wu dialect and Kra-Dai languages quoted from Li Hui (2001). He notes that, in Wu dialect, final consonants such as -m, -ɯ, -i, ụ, etc don't exist, and therefore, -m in Maqiao dialect tends to become -ŋ or -n, or it's simply absent, and in some cases -m even becomes final glottal stop.^[31]

Map of the Chinese plain at the start of the Warring States Period in the 5th century BC.

Some scattered non-Sinitic words found in the two ancient Chinese fictional texts, Mu tianzi zhuan 穆天子傳 (4th c. B.C.) and Yuejue shu 越絕書 (1st c. A.D.), can be compared to lexical items in Kra-Dai languages. These two texts are only preserved in corrupt versions and share a rather convoluted editorial history. Wolfgang Behr (2002) makes an attempt to identify the origins of those words:

• "吳謂善「伊」, 謂稻道「缓」, 號從中國, 名從主人。"^[32]

“The Wú say yī for ‘good’ and huăn for ‘way’, i.e. in their titles they follow the central kingdoms, but in their names they follow their own lords.”

伊 yī < ʔjij < *^bq(l)ij ← Siamese dii^A1, Longzhou dai¹, Bo'ai nii¹ Daiya li¹, Sipsongpanna di¹, Dehong li⁶ < proto-Tai *ʔdɛi^A1 | Sui ʔdaai¹, Kam laai¹, Maonan ʔdaai¹, Mak ʔdaai⁶ < proto-Kam-Sui/proto-Kam-Tai *ʔdaai¹ 'good'

缓 [huăn] < hwanX < *^awan ← Siamese hon^A1, Bo'ai hɔn¹, Dioi thon¹ < proto-Tai *xron^A1| Sui khwən¹-i, Kam khwən¹, Maonan khun¹-i, Mulam khwən¹-i < proto-Kam-Sui *khwən¹ 'road, way' | proto-Hlai *kuun¹ || proto-Austronesian *Zalan (Thurgood 1994:353)

• yuè jué shū 越絕書 (The Book of Yuè Records), 1st c. A.D.^[33]

絕 jué < dzjwet < *^bdzot ← Siamese cod^D1 'to record, mark' (Zhengzhang Shangfang 1999:8)

• "姑中山者越銅官之山也, 越人謂之銅, 「姑[沽]瀆」。"^[33]

“The Middle mountains of Gū are the mountains of the Yuè’s bronze office, the Yuè people call them ‘Bronze gū[gū]dú.”

「姑[沽]瀆」 gūdú < ku=duwk < *^aka=^alok

← Siamese kʰau^A1 'horn', Daiya xau⁵, Sipsongpanna xau¹, Dehong xau¹, Lü xău¹, Dioi kaou¹ 'mountain, hill' < proto-Tai *kʰau^A2; Siamese luuk^D2l 'classifier for mountains', Siamese kʰau^A1-luuk^D2l 'mountain' || cf. OC 谷 gǔ < kuwk << *^ak-lok/luwk < *^akə-lok/yowk < *^blok 'valley'

• "越人謂船爲「須盧」。"^[34]

"... The Yuè people call a boat xūlú. (‘beard’ & ‘cottage’)"

須 xū < sju < *^bs(n)o

? ← Siamese saʔ 'noun prefix'

盧 lú < lu < *^bra

← Siamese rɯa^A2, Longzhou lɯɯ², Bo'ai luu², Daiya hə², Dehong hə² 'boat' < proto-Tai *drɯ[a,o] | Sui lwa¹/ʔda¹, Kam lo¹/lwa¹, Be zoa < proto-Kam-Sui *s-lwa(n)^A1 'boat'

• "[劉]賈築吳市西城, 名曰「定錯」城。"^[35]

"[Líu] Jiă (the king of Jīng 荆) built the western wall, it was called dìngcuò ['settle(d)' & 'grindstone'] wall."

定 dìng < dengH < *^adeng-s

Kra-Dai migration proposed by James R. Chamberlain (2016).

← Siamese diaaŋ^A1, Daiya tʂhəŋ², Sipsongpanna tseŋ² 'wall'

錯 cuò < tshak < *^atshak

? ← Siamese tok^D1s 'to set→sunset→west' (tawan-tok 'sun-set' = 'west'); Longzhou tuk⁷, Bo'ai tɔk⁷, Daiya tok⁷, Sipsongpanna tok⁷ < proto-Tai *tok^D1s ǀ Sui tok⁷, Mak tok⁷, Maonan tɔk < proto-Kam-Sui *tɔk^D1

James R. Chamberlain (2016) proposes that Kra-Dai language family was formed as early as the 12th century BCE in the middle Yangtze basin, coinciding roughly with the establishment of the Chu fiefdom and the beginning of the Zhou dynasty.^[36] Following the southward migrations of Kra and Hlai (Rei/Li) peoples from the ancient state of Chu around the 8th century BCE, the Be-Tai people started to break away to the east coast in the present-day Zhejiang, in the 6th century BCE, establishing the state of Yue.^[36] After the destruction of the state of Yue by Chu army around 333 BCE, Yue people (Be-Tai) began to migrate southwards along the east coast of China to what are now Guangxi, Guizhou and northern Vietnam, forming Luo Yue (Central-Southwestern Tai) and Xi Ou (Northern Tai).^[36]

From the Middle Ages to the Present

In 1038, Nùng Tồn Phúc (Nong Quanfu, Chinese: 儂全福), a Nùng chieftain, proclaimed the founding of the Kingdom of Longevity (Chang Qi Guo 長生國). The king of Annamese kingdom, Dai Co Viet, led an army into the region in the third month of 1039, captured Nùng Tồn Phúc and most of his family, and returned them to Dai Co Viet for execution. His 14-year-old son, Nùng Trí Cao (Nong Zhigao, Chinese: 儂智高), evaded capture.^[37] Nùng Trí Cao then rose up three times in 1041, 1048, 1052. But finally he was defeated by the Song, a Chinese dynasty at that times. After the defeat of Nùng Trí Cao, Many of the Nùng rebels fled to Vietnam, concentrating around Cao Bằng and Lạng Sơn provinces and became known as the Nùng. Barlow (2005) suggests that many of the original 11th-century rebels who fled to Vietnam were absorbed by the related Tày peoples of the region.^[37]

The Nùng, although lacking a leader of the stature of Nùng Trí Cao, rose up in 1352, 1430, 1434^[37] and many other unrecorded rebellions.

In the 16th century the Zhuang, principally from Guangxi and perhaps from southeast Yunnan, began migrating into Vietnam. This movement was quickened by the acceleration of the cycle of disasters, and by the political events of the seventeenth century which brought larger numbers of Chinese immigrants into the region, such as the fall of the Ming, the rebellion of Wu Sangui, the Qing occupation, and the Muslim revolts in Yunnan.^[37] This migration was a peaceful one which occurred family by family.^[37] French administrators later identified a number of Nùng clans in the course of their ethnographic surveys.^[37] These had incorporated Chinese place names in their clan names and hence indicate the place of their origin in China, such as the "Nùng Inh" clan, from Long Ying in the southwest of Guangxi.^[37] Such other names as can be correlated with locations indicate that the migrants were primarily from the immediate frontier region of the southwest of Guangxi.^[37] The Nùng became increasingly numerous in the region, and were spread out through a long stretch of the Vietnamese northern border from Lạng Sơn to Cao Bằng, and about That Khe.^[37] The Mạc dynasty, a Vietnamese dynasty ruled over the Vietnamese northeast highlands, profited from the migration in that they were able to draw upon Nùng manpower for their own forces.^[37]

In 1833, Nông Văn Vân, a Nùng chieftain, led a rebellion against Vietnamese rule. He quickly took control of Cao Bằng, Tuyên Quang, Thái Nguyên and Lạng Sơn provinces, aiming to create a separate Tày-Nùng state in the northern region of Vietnam. His rising was eventually suppressed by the Nguyễn dynasty in 1835.

In the 1860s, the Nùng sided with Sioung (Xiong), a self-proclaimed Hmong king. Sioung's armies raided gold from Buddhist temples and seized large tracts of land from other people.^[38]

The period from the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64) to the early twentieth century was marked by continual waves of immigration by Zhuang/Nùng peoples from China into Vietnam.^[37] These waves were a result of the continuous drought of Guangxi which made the thinly occupied lands of northern Vietnam an attractive alternative habitation. The immigration process was generally a peaceful one as the Nùng purchased land from the "Tho" owners.^[37] The Nùng were superior to the Tho in cultivating wet rice and transformed poor lands, facilitating later migrations into adjoining areas.^[37] The repeated violent incursions of the Taiping era and the Black Flag occupation accelerated the outflow of Tho as the bands from China were largely Zhuang who favored the Nùng at the expense of the Tho.^[37] The Tho who remained became alienated from the Vietnamese government which could not offer protection and became clients of the Chinese and the Nùng.^[37]

The Nùng dominance became so pronounced that when Sun Yat-sen wished to raise fighters in the region, he could recruit them from Nùng villages such as Na Cen and Na Mo, both on the Vietnamese side of the border.^[37] The French colonists saw this Nùng predominance as a threat, and found it convenient at that time to re-assert the primacy of the Vietnamese administrative system in the region.^[37]

The French, however, perhaps having less choice, tended to support the Tho and other minorities, often undifferentiated as "Man" in their reports—usually a reference to Yao—as a counterweight against the Nùng.^[37] In 1908, for example, following an incident in which Sun Yat-sen's mercenary Nung warriors had killed several French officers, the French offered a bounty of eight dollars for each head brought in by the "Man".^[37] The bounty was paid 150 times.^[37]

The French colonial government took advantage of ancient tensions between the highland ethnic groups and the Kinh majority in Vietnam. In the northwest mountains, they set up a semi-autonomous minority federation called Sip Song Chau Tai (French: Pays Taï), complete with armed militias and border guards.^[39] When war broke out in 1946, groups of Thai, H’mong and Muong in the northwest sided with the French and against the Vietnamese and even provided battalions to fight with the French troops.^[39] But The Nùng and Tày supported the Viet Minh and provided the Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, with a safe base for his guerrilla armies.^[40] After defeating the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the Viet Minh tried to win the allegiance of all of the northern ethnic minorities by creating two autonomous zones, Thai–Meo Autonomous Zone and Viet Bac Autonomous Zone respectively, allowing limited self-government within a “unified multi-national state”.^[39] During the Vietnam War, many Nùng fought alongside the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).^[39]

After the Unification of Vietnam in 1975, Viet Bac Autonomous Zone in which the Nùng and Tày were most numerous was revoked by Lê Duẩn. the new government pursued a policy of forced assimilation of the minorities into the Vietnamese culture.^[39] All education was conducted in the Vietnamese language, traditional customs were discouraged or outlawed, and minority people were moved from their villages into government settlements.^[39] At the same time the government created “New Economic Zones” along the Chinese border and in the Central Highlands. Frequently this involved taking the best land in order to resettle thousands of people from the overcrowded lowlands.^[39] During the 1980s, an estimated 250,000 ethic Vietnamese were settled in the mountainous regions along the Chinese border, leading to a shortage of food in the region and much suffering.^[40]

As tension arose between Vietnam and China in 1975, Hanoi feared the loyalty of the Nùng and the Chinese-Vietnamese,^[41] concerning that they would side with China. This comes from the fact that many of the Nùng just migrated into the Vietnamese border side and many of their relatives still lived in the other side of the border.

In the 1990s, the Doi Moi program brought a shift in policy, including the creation of a government department responsible for minority affairs. Many of the changes and the liberalization that preserving the heritage of the Nung and other ethnic groups has a great appeal to tourists a source of significant income for Vietnam. Nonetheless, in many areas the minorities’ traditional lifestyles are fast being eroded.^[40]

With the territorial disputes between Vietnam and China in recent years, the ethnic minorities living in the borderland, including the Nùng, have been under the watchful eye of the Vietnamese government.